Ten Things You Should Think About Getting Rid Of

Many people have collections of types of media including vinyl records, VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, cassette tapes, and so forth. 

I went ahead and ripped most of my CDs to my computer and sold or donated them.  In the process, I re-discovered my music collection, because I was only listening to music on my phone and computer, never on CDs.  Check out this article on ripping tapes to your computer.

Evaluate your old hobbies to see which ones you’ll really take up again.  For me, it was electronic music equipment.  I had so much of it, yet rarely used it anymore.  I sold it on ebay and made thousands of dollars!

How likely is it that you’ll use those snow shoes now that you’re living in Miami?  How often do you use that kayak, or skis or Rollerblades?  Would it be easier or even more economical to rent these in the future? For me, it was the punching bag that I never used, especially after I joined a gym.

This means children’s clothes, toys, books, old bikes, etc. Time to clear out the garage and give those things to a family that can use them. You’ll be so glad you did!

I love books, but they take up a lot of space and are really heavy if you have to move.  I even had some books from college.  I donated many of them to a library and put some on Craigslist for free. You might be able to sell some, but that does take a lot of your time.

When I did my de-cluttering, I found two of the exact same shirt!  I had so many clothes that I didn’t know what I had and bought the same shirt twice.  I also had a lot of clothing that I hadn’t worn in years. 

Donate items that you no longer wear or no longer fit. Use old towels as rags when you wash your car or your dog.

I was storing boxes and boxes of old pay stubs, bank statements, and receipts.  In many cases, the IRS only recommends saving records from the last three years.  It turns out that most of my recent records were online, so I was able to shred most of my paper records.  You could scan it, but that takes a ton of time unless you have an automatic feeder.

In general, electronic items depreciate extremely quickly. Rarely does it pay to hang on to old tech, with the possible exception of music equipment. The longer you hang on to these items, the more worthless they become.

So sell them while they still have some value. Apple products tent to hold their value better than most other consumer electronics. I sold a really old iPad and MacBook Pro on ebay for over $100 each. Not a lot, but better than nothing.

When going through your stuff, ask yourself, “If I didn’t have this item, but I found it at a garage sale, would I buy it?”  If the answer is “no”, get rid of it.

Overall, my advice when deciding what to get rid of is to think big.  Leave no item exempt from consideration.  There are so many things that glossed over when I made my first pass at de-cluttering because I thought “I might use that someday”.  Only later did I realize that was probably a fantasy.